


A different turn of events

by ElnaK



Series: Books of Blood [3]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: First Meetings, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-10
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2018-03-29 22:18:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3912643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElnaK/pseuds/ElnaK
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Damon was getting happily drunk at the Mystic Grill when he noticed a man taking a seat at the bar counter. Half-wasted, he took an interest in observing the man... up till the point he was not half-wasted anymore.</p><p>Or what if Alaric had been too broken to even try to kill Damon and was only searching for answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A different turn of events

**Author's Note:**

> I started this, I only wanted to write something about their two rings colliding during their first encounter. Strangely enough, it became much more.

Everything was so loud.

People laughing, people talking, people arguing. Maybe that was the risk with going to a bar to get a drink instead of simply going home and siphoning off a bottle of bourbon. But still. The place was so loud he could barely hear his own thoughts.

Which was a bit ridiculous since, you know, one person's thoughts are supposed to be in his head. You can't hear them, right? Still, he couldn't. Too much noise.

Too much alcohol too, certainly. If he hadn't been at least a bit drunk, Damon was certain he wouldn't be thinking about what should be a vocabulary misuse and yet wasn't.

Someone sat down two barstools away.

The vampire rose his head, a bit curious. Sometimes, when he had had too much drinks, he was curious about stupid things. As, why was the color yellow named yellow, or why people tended to despise him.

It was a man.

He actually had already seen him at the Mystic Grill once or twice before, but not before recently. A newcomer, maybe? Or a returnee. Or a man who had had some shitty business lately and had begun to come here and drown his sorrow in an alcoholic stupor. Pretty much what he was himself doing. And, as a matter of fact, Damon was positive it worked. After all, he didn't remember what had lead him to the bar, drinking himself to death or so he wished he could do.

It was a young man, all in all, even though he looked older than Damon. But a lot of people looked older than Damon, and yet he was older than they were. His body had not aged a day since 1864. Vampires' privilege.

So, a young man, around his... thirties?

He looked a bit tired, and was already asking the bartender for a glass of bourbon.

Same tastes, eh? Interesting.

The vampire squeezed his eyes a bit. His vision was getting blurred. Or maybe not. Damon closed his eyes for a second, then opened them again. There it was, all better. Maybe he shouldn't have taken one last glass of alcohol. Or, more likely, the five last drinks had been unecessary.

The man took a sip of his own drink.

The moment a drop of bourbon ran down his chin instead of going into his mouth seemed to last forever. The amber colored liquid had strayed out of the artistically delimited lips, and now it was searching its way across the almost inexistant blond beard.

The glass made a snapping sound when it was put down on the bar counter.

A finger reached for the lost drop of bourbon, which soon disappeared, swiped away.

The man seemed to hesitate, sighed, and passed his finger on his lips. Then his hand went up and ran through his light brown hair.

Damon thought it would be nicer if he let it grow a bit.

But who was he to care about that?

The vampire closed his eyes as he finished his glass. You could always get drunker. Or at least you could if you were a vampire. Though, now that he thought about it, Damon remembered passing out from too much alcohol once or twice in his decades long life. For now, he could, anyway, and he wasn't going to miss the opportunity.

It's time to forget.

Forget what?

His worries.

Which were?

The vampire blinked. He couldn't remember. Proof it went smoothly, just as it was supposed to. Let's forget everything that makes our hearts hurt, shall we?

He put down his own glass, and wondered for a while if he would take another one or just head back to the boarding house, tumble down on his bed, and sleep to his heart's content.

He was still uncertain of what to do when the man two seats away asked for another glass.

Damon looked at him once more. He was reading some papers.

The man apparently noticed he was being watched, because he looked sideway and their eyes met.

That's when Damon saw it.

Rage swirling in the blue eyes, just for a single second, so strong and fierce the vampire could have broken down from just this glare if it had lasted any longer. Anger, hot and intense and burning as hellfire, lighting those eyes from the inside. A light so terrible it destroyed the slightest hint of darkness in what could be seen of the man's soul. A fire so blazing it burnt to ashes every shred of humanity in the man's eyes. Pure madness, reduced to two terrific balls of hatred, barely hidden in the shallowness of one's pupils.

One second.

And then nothing else. The eyes of the man were perfectly normal, up still wasn't down, right and left hadn't become left and right, and no one had tried to blown up the Mystic Grill. The whole world couldn't have been any more unexceptional.

Damon gulped, staggering on his bar stool.

The man smiled and reached out to him.

“Alaric Saltzman. I'm the new history teacher.”

Damon frowned at his glass. He didn't believe he was so drunk he started seeing things.

“Sorry, I was thinking of something else. So, you're my brother's new teacher, then. I'm Damon Salvatore, the big brother, and pointless guardian of Stefan Salvatore. Not sure you already met him, though, lately I simply can't get him to leave the house, family drama and teenager drama and health issues and all...”

The vampire shook hands with the man, still glaring at his glass as if a fairy or an alien was going to pop out of it. But nope, no fairy, no alien, and the man, Alaric, was it? still looked like a perfectly charming man. So either Damon was becoming mad, or he was a little drunk. What was sure was that it wasn't a dream. Maybe he was drunk and crazy.

The world started to spin around.

That was the signal he'd better stop drinking and just go home, certainly.

“Wish you luck with your copies... I guess? I'm not sure, I think I'm pretty stunned. I'd rather go home before I fall asleep on the bar counter. Always saying I shouldn't drink so much, and I never listen. Not my fault if my life is a mess, really. Screw Katherine. What was I talking about, already? I really, really need to go home, this is getting ludicrous.”

The teacher watched him get on his feet without saying anything.

Damon tried to walk away.

Strangely enough, he couldn't. As if...

He looked back at the counter, and saw his own hand, still holding on his glass, but apparently unwilling to move it or to let go of it. He frowned. His hand had no reason to be glued to a glass. So why couldn't he let go of it and simply leave?

If his body wasn't responding to his desires, he was definitely wasted.

“Come on, I have to go home...”

Still not complying. Damon had no idea his hand could be such a pain. Rebellious stage, maybe?

Alaric Saltzman watched him struggle with his hand, and smirked. After a little while, he reached out for the glass and put two fingers on its edge. He had a black, voluminous ring, that looked strangely familiar. The man pressed gently on the glass. Their skin came into contact.

It was freaking cold. Humanly cold, yes, but freaking cold. Damon wasn't sure he had already met someone with such cold hands.

His hand let go of the glass.

“Better, now?”

“Thanks. I don't... know what that was. Drank too much, certainly.”

The teacher nodded.

Damon tried to leave.

His legs didn't let him do so and he'd have fallen to the ground if the man hadn't caught him by the wrist.

“Hold on there. You're definitely not able to go home.”

“Yet I have to. Can't stay here all night, can I?”

“I'll drive you back.”

That was too much kindness to be genuine, the vampire thought. But he was in no state to judge a situation. How many decades since the last time he had been so drunk he couldn't even stand on his feet? Three, or four, maybe. He wasn't sure. After all, the memories of that time were pretty... fuzzy.

Alaric let go of his wrist, watching with concern if Damon could walk properly or not.

He couldn't.

“Sit down a moment, then we'll go.”

The vampire remembered he didn't like people bossing him around. Which was strange, since he didn't seem to bother right now. There was something with this man's voice, which was kind of conforting. So calm, and yet slightly bitter. As the voice of a man who's life had been shattered, broken into pieces, hammered flat till there was nothing left of it. As the voice of a man who couldn't care much about anything now. As the voice of a man who was the same as him.

Destroyed to the core.

The teacher paid for his drinks, then came back.

“You're coming?”

“Yes.”

The man reached out to support him as Damon wasn't really steady on his feet. The vampire reached out to grab onto his arm. Their hands almost met each other. Their rings tinkled as they brushed one another.

It was a pure, flawless sound. Metallic, resonant, short sound.

Their eyes met.

There it was.

Hatred.

He hadn't been daydreaming when he had seen it in the man's eyes, not long before. Or he was daydreaming now too. Eitherway, there it was.

The most perfect, consuming hatred, in the eyes of a man he had never met before. A flawless feeling, as the sound of their rings colliding, storming in the blue of two human eyes.

It didn't last long. One second, and then nothing more. Perfectly normal gaze.

Damon cocked his head to the left. Or maybe his head cocked itself to the left, he couldn't really say if it was his will or the alcohol that was tilting his body in ways that were definitely not natural.

“I know you.”

He hadn't noticed before, but he knew the man from before. Something about a bedroom, maybe. There was a woman, too. Damon snorted. There was always a woman. Each time there was a problem, there was a woman involved. Maybe he should stop trying to get the girl, after all. Could only end badly. He should have known, by now. It was always ending badly. But which girl was he thinking about, anyway? Not sure. He'll try and figure out later.

Nonetheless, he had seen this face before coming back to Mystic Falls, he was certain of it.

The teacher smiled, but his smile was cold, unpleasant, threatening. Anger was flaming up his blue iris, and the vampire wasn't sure it was blue anymore, but who cared? The purity of the feeling igniting the man from the inside was spellbinding. Never before he had seen such intensity.

Damon felt jealousy crushing his chest. It was as if something was pressing on his ribs and making them collapse on his internal organs. What would he have given to experience such a purity in his feelings? Such strenght, such authenticity for him to be drowned into, completely forgetting himself? To be a thunderbolt of sensations, to live for nothing else than the thrill. Not caring, for real this time, about anything else than the intensity of feelings. Devastating feelings, able to anihilate the little that was left of his ethics.

It was a vain wish. A self-destructive wish, surely. But still. Sometimes, you only wish to forget. This time, Damon did.

They left the Grill. The vampire was almost able to walk by himself, but from time to time, Alaric had to stop him from falling to the ground.

It was strange. The man was gentle with him, though he openly showed his hatred towards Damon. As if there were two of him. One that hated. One that loved. More than two of him, maybe. One that cared. One that mocked. One that helped. One that abandonned.

“You know me, indeed.”

The vampire sat in a car he knew wasn't his. Surely the teacher's.

Alaric sat at the driver's seat, and started the car.

“Where do you live?”

No one answered.

The man looked at the vampire sitting next to him. He was asleep.

Alaric sighed and drove home. He somehow managed to drag Damon in his apartment, and left him to rest on his bed. The vampire was sleeping, and it seemed as if he was completely dead this time.

The teacher watched him sleep for a while, then went and grabbed some stakes from his drawer. He then sat down on a chair, and waited.

He hated this vampire more than anything else in the world. He knew that. And yet, he knew he couldn't have cared less that the one who had killed his wife was actually sleeping on his bed.

Lately, he hadn't cared much about anything.

Damon Salvatore. A name he had engraved in his memory from the day he had learned it.

A freaking vampire. Dead, yet undead. Who had killed his wife after having sex with her. Or, more likely, while having sex with her. But had he killed her?

Isobel, always searching for the supernatural. Never happy with what she had. Loving her husband unconditionally, and yet aching for so much more. Alaric smiled a sad smile. Aching for so much more. Wasn't he the one, now, who was yearning for so much more?

Be it death, be it life, be it love.

Whatever.

Isobel, dying from her obsession.

Isobel was a disease, and while leaving this world, she had made sure she had infected her husband.

Alaric was tired.

The way he had been feeling everything so strongly lately was tiring. And in a way, it had lead him not to feel anything anymore. The hatred, the love, the frustration were still there. He could feel them. But he... they didn't reach him anymore. It was strange.

Maybe his mind was coming to an end. Feeling things so purely couldn't be good for the human mind. He was already estranging himself from them. As if they weren't exactly a part of him anymore. Too pure to be human.

Even thinking that he might have been on his way to dying was meaningless to him, now. It should have frightened him. It hadn't. Why should he be afraid? Fear wasn't a part of him anymore, too.

Thinking about it, not being freaked out by his state of mind, Alaric felt like an empty shell.

It wasn't a problem. He didn't care, after all.

His gaze fell upon the sleeping vampire on his bed.

All he wanted was an answer. Knowing, nothing less, nothing more. Maybe he wouldn't care about the answer. Maybe he would. It wasn't the issue. He had decided, in the week following Isobel's death, that he'd find out where was her body. He would stick to this decision.

The teacher wasn't sure of what he'd do once he'd know.

Maybe his heart would heal, and he'd go back to being a proper human being, with, you know, actual feelings. Maybe he'd lose his last _raison d'être_ , which wasn't really one anymore anyway, and would only wish to end it.

Eitherway.

He couldn't stay the way he was.

It was way too tiring. And yet he didn't feel like sleeping. Not for now, at least. When he'd be too tired, he'd fall asleep. It had been this way for months now.

The man looked up.

There was a clock on the wall. Ticking its way through time with little concern of what was going on in the room, it worked well, and Alaric watched it for hours before turning his head to look at the vampire on his bed, finally moving and most likely waking up.

The first thing Damon noticed when he opened his eyes, was that he wasn't in his room.

Luckily for him, vampires weren't affected by such petty things as a hangover.

“Where the hell am I?”

“In my apartment. You passed out before telling me where you lived, so I took you home and put you to sleep. Try not to drink so much next time.”

Of course, the fact that the man saying this had a stake in his hand and three other weapons on the table next to him alarmed the vampire.

First of all, how could the man know he was a vampire? Alaric Saltzman, if it was really his name, had no bite mark anywhere visible, so Damon hadn't attacked him half-sleeping. Or at least, he hoped so. Because if he had, and both of them were still in one piece, then the man wasn't a man. And if he wasn't a man and was the one having a stake in hand, and if, for any reason, he wanted Damon dead, then Damon was as good as dead.

Let's say Damon hadn't attacked him and he was purely human. It would be better for everyone. Truly. Let's say no one was going to die in the next hour, that no one was going to try and kill someone else, that Alaric Saltzman was only fond of stakes.

Yeah, that's it, let's say the world wasn't shitty and surely planning a revenge for every single one of the vampire's misdeeds over the last decades.

“We know each other, don't we?”

Alaric put the stake on the table, clearly pointing out he wasn't here as a threat. Or maybe he was simply stupid.

“Knowing might be a bit much, but yes, we already met each other. Last time I saw you, you were feeding on my wife in our bedroom.”

The vampire frowned. If the teacher wasn't lying, he surely didn't have any good feeling towards him. Still, the stakes were on the table, and not in the man's hands.

“That being said, I'd like to know where is her body.”

“They never found the body? Then...”

Indeed, the man's face was familiar.

“You're Isobel's husband?”

Alaric tensed up.

“I am.”

“Well, then, I hate to break it to you, but I didn't kill her. Well, not exactly. She...”

“She asked you to turn her.”

Damon looked him in the eyes, surprised. Not only the teacher hadn't killed him on the spot, but he wasn't even startled. Maybe he had known from the beginning, somewhere in the darkest spot of his mind, that Isobel had most likely tried to become a vampire at some point. Sure, he couldn't have been certain she had succeeded, after all, the vampire she asked could have simply killed her. But somehow, he had known it was a possibility.

The vampire shuddered. For a second, he had seen hurt in the man's eyes, enough suffering to madden anyone, but it was already gone.

“I see.”

And that was all.

I see.

“You're no going to kill me?”

Alaric looked at him, a bit surprised.

“You'd want me to?”

“No. I was only wondering, since, you know, I kind of ruined your life and all...”

“Isobel ruined my life. You wouldn't have done it, she'd have found another vampire to ask. I could be angry at you, if you had killed her instead, but you didn't. What am I supposed to do? Be angry at any random person who helped my wife to get away from me and our ordinary life? If so, I'll may need many more killing devices, because I'll have to kill the ones who gave her fake ID or whatever. I don't intend to spend the rest of my life on a killing spree, thank you very much.”

The more the vampire listened to the man, the more it sounded as if the teacher wasn't planning on having a very long rest of his life. Damon didn't understand why, but that bothered him more than it should have.

Alaric reached for a knife, right next to the stakes, and looked at it ominously without saying a word. Then, without a warning, he stabbed his own neck.

Damon wasn't thinking.

It didn't matter.

He rushed to the man's side, tore open his own wrist, and forced him to drink some of his blood, before taking the knife out of his flesh. This way, his blood had already begun to heal Alaric when he pulled out the blade. They only had to hope it wasn't too late, that the wound would close completely, that the man would live.

If he didn't, Alaric Saltzman would still come back to life, but given his state of mind, the vampire wasn't sure he would accept to complete the transition. Hell, Damon didn't even know him, he couldn't even be certain that the man would be okay with being a vampire if he hadn't been in a suicidal mood.

And, first of all, why had he tried to save him?

Damon wasn't Saint Stefan. He didn't save people out of kindness. So why had he saved Alaric?

It wasn't because of guilt, either. After all, he was Damon bastard Salvatore, the killing maniac vampire. If each time he had killed someone he felt like he needed to compensate and save a family member, he'd be a bloody blood bank by now. Which would be pretty hilarious, but still.

Alaric spat out blood and tried to breathe with little results. He sat up, spat some more blood on the floor, and looked at Damon with a lost gaze.

“Why?”

The vampire remembered the night before. How he was curious about this man, so strange, so freaking him out, so human yet. How he was paying him more attention than he had ever paid a man attention before. How, without realizing, he had been watching him move, breathe, live.

Why?

He honestly had no idea.

But here he was, with the broken soul of a man he had just saved after having destroyed his whole life, with his own broken soul that suddenly started to feel like it was a complete piece and not some random chunks of a formless thing without a name.

Why?

“I don't know.”

Alaric looked at him with wide eyes for a while, surely considering how much of a twisted situation they were in. His features tensed, and Damon feared to see the rage from before pervading his eyes once again.

The man began to laugh. It was a tiny, gentle, sweet laughter, with sparkles of joy and gems of happiness in it. Maybe he still had something to live for, if he still had something to laugh at.

Alaric let himself fall on the ground once more, but much more smoothly. Damon, bewildered until then, had him to sit up once again.

“There's blood everywhere on the floor, man. Your blood. And now you have blood-dyed hair. That will be hell to clean. Why the fuck did you do that to begin with?”

“Thanks for saving me.”

“That's not an answer.”

Alaric ignored him and tried to stand up, but all he achieved was bloodying the nearest chair and falling on his back once more. Damon rolled his eyes and gave him a hand.

“Time to shower, idiot. Here, stand up, and don't fall on your ass again.”

The teached finally got up, but he wasn't very steady on his feet and tripped. The vampire caugh him before he fell once again, and they found themselves in a strange and uncomfortable hug.

Damon wished he could have pushed Alaric away, but the man's legs were still staggering. They stayed still a bit longer, until they were positive his knees weren't going to give in anytime soon. And while they stayed motionless in this awkward hug, Damon's heart began racing.

Alaric had said something he couldn't possibly inderstand. Too illogical.

“Thank you so much, Damon. For everything.”

 


End file.
